The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales are a collection of
fairy tales that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected and annotated into a book.
These stories are quite different from the cookie cutter versions that Disney
has created for our enjoyment. The real tales are often quite dark and while
Disney has made efforts to lessen the blow that it is death, the Grimm brothers
made no such attempts. The Grimm tales are filled with despair such as cutting
off toes, ankles, and the wolfs stomach being sliced open to save Little Red Riding
Hood and her Grandmother. One major difference between Disney’s
Snow
White is that instead of the evil step-mother just keeping he heart in a
box, she ate it! That is if the huntsman had not given her a bear heart instead
of Snow White’s heart. Also, a very slight difference is that the huntsman gave
the wicked queen a pig’s heart in Disney instead of a Bear’s. I thought this
was quite interesting. Like why would it matter that it was a bear’s heart?
Also the queen eating the heart is super metal.
Another difference in Snow White is that when the queen was disguised as
the old hag she uses a poison apple in the Disney version and a poison comb in
the Grimm tale. The two versions of Snow White differ one just a few points,
but have the same overall plot. One story that is drastically different is the
story of Rapunzel. The Grimm Tale goes a little bit like this: a man and a wife
steal herbs from an enchantress to bear a child. The enchantress catches them,
takes the child after letting the parents go, and locks the child in a very
high tower. Rapunzel grows very long hair and Mother Gothel (the enchantress)
uses the hair to be lowered and raised into the tall tower, like in the Disney
version. Then one day, the Kings son, after watching mother Gothel leave the
tower, climbed the tower himself (with Rapunzel’s hair) and made a plan with
Rapunzel to escape from the tower. Mother Gothel learns of the plans, cuts her
hair, and banishes her to live in a desert. The king’s son tries to climb the
tower to rescue Rapunzel, but is met by Gothel and sets off to find Rapunzel.
The two eventually live a happy life together after being reunited. This is a
lot different from the recent Disney version. I would guess that this was changed
to be more entertaining for viewers. I came across one story that the Grimm Brothers
had collected that I was not familiar with that was pretty interesting. The
story is called
The Seven Ravens. A man and wife have seven sons and
long for a daughter. They are blessed with one, but she is very sick. The brothers
are sent to get water to baptize the sister to try to bless her with good
health. Each brother, wanting to be the first to give water, accidently drops
the pail into the well. The father, after getting angry with his sons, wishes that
they all turned into ravens, which they do. The daughter grows healthy after
the curse take effect. For a while she does not know of her brothers, but
overhears her parents speaking of them. She sneaks off in the night to find
them. She eventually finds where the Raven Lords, as her brothers become known
as, reside. She has to cut off her fingers to get into the house and waits for
the brothers to return. The brothers saw that someone (the sister) had been
eating from their food, when one raven came upon her finger with their mother’s
ring on it. The ravens then said “
God grant that our sister may be here, and then we shall be free”. The
sister then went in, the curse was broken, and they all rejoiced and returned home.Fairy tales themselves usually are magical, take place in a far away land, and teach use some sort of lesson.
http://www.modernghana.com/lifestyle/1315/16/what-makes-a-story-a-fairy-tale.html
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